


And Still, We Try

by veenaistired



Category: Bravely Default (Video Game) & Related Fandoms, Bravely Default II
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Missing Scene, hugs are better than kisses i don't make the rules, lactose intolerance inducing cheese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:55:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29986665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veenaistired/pseuds/veenaistired
Summary: A few days after seeing the future-memory of them fighting the Night's Nexus at Mag Mell, Adelle and Elvis have a long-overdue talk.Spoilers up until the final chapter!
Relationships: Adelle/Elvis
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	And Still, We Try

**Author's Note:**

> Remember bad ending two where Adelle and Elvis have this really heartfelt and tragic love confession? Yes? Cool. Also remember how it’s never addressed again? Yeah, well I think that’s bullshit, so I’m here to fix that. 
> 
> Thanks for stopping by and hope you enjoy <3

Out of all the things Elvis thought his travels might throw at him, 'tragic love confession right before being inevitably and irreversibly ripped apart forever' wouldn’t have made the list. But what does he know, right? 

The situation is this – They’re one noble princess and her entourage on a, so far not only dangerous, but deadly journey to save the literal world from an all-consuming evil. Which in itself is already kind of, you know, stressful. Then, somewhere along said journey, he manages to fall in love with his most trusted friend and companion, namely Adelle. So that’s weird, right? But it keeps on getting better. They’re off to Adelle’s super-secret village to confront the big baddie. Except right before the final showdown they’re hit with yet another memory out of Lady Emma’s cryptic book, and it isn’t pretty.

In short, they fail at the _one job_ they had and Adelle and Elvis are permanently separated by a magic barrier, not a minute after he tells her the truth about how he feels about her. The fact that she actually turned out to return his feeling only making the whole thing worse. Oh, also Gloria and Seth saw all of it. 

In other words, it’s incredibly awkward.

This isn’t how he planned it to go, him telling her that he loved her, not that he had any sort of plan in the first place. Honestly, Elvis has no idea how he even thought it would happen, but this sure as hell wasn’t it. Now he just thinks they’d be spared the embarrassment if he’d only manned up and said something sooner. Whatever. What’s done is done, at least in some form depending on how the whole future memory thing works, and they need to keep moving on. 

But how to do that? It’s been a full twenty-four hours since their second not-really run-in with the Night’s Nexus and neither Adelle nor Elvis have so much as mentioned what happened. The way they’re dancing around each other is almost definitely annoying the others as well by now, a suspicion that’s confirmed when they decide to make camp for the night. When Gloria and Seth scurry off to 'secure the perimeter' as soon as the tent and campfire are all set up it’s obvious they’re just trying to give Adelle and him a chance to talk alone. A Favor which Elvis is only half-thankful for.

Thing is, Elvis isn’t some green boy anymore who’s reduced to a blushing and stammering mess every time someone he likes is within a one-mile radius. And while there’s no blushing or stammering around Adelle, he can still feel his heart beating the tiniest bit faster when they’re alone together. Sure, he’s nothing if not a master at playing it off, over the years he’s become very proficient at acting almost shockingly blasé about possibly life-changing situations, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t nervous. 

Because he is. Big time.

And then there’s the fact that he saw her all but giving up on life out of some sense of duty, and not even his confession was able to change her mind. It might’ve been nothing more than a memory, but the pain of losing her was real. He can still feel it, in the pit of his stomach.

Elvis knows he has no right to be angry with her for staying behind like that, she had her reasons. Hell, if it’d been Wiswald instead of Mag Mell he might’ve done the same. But still, it stings. Because the fact that he wasn’t enough to make her stay almost feels a little bit like a rejection. 

He hates admitting it, but all of this combined doesn’t exactly do wonders for his usually boundless confidence. 

So, he sits by the fire while Adelle pretends to be organizing their supplies, telling himself he just needs to find the right words, then he’ll talk to her, as if it isn’t some cheap excuse. A bit of time passes, then some more, and still, not a bit of progress. He almost expects the opportunity to come and go, when Adelle walks up to him. She unceremoniously plops down onto the ground next to him, not meeting his eyes but staring firmly at her hands instead. After another tense moment of silence, she finally speaks.

"Hey." 

"Hey," he answers lamely and has a hard time not cringing at himself. 

"So, we should probably talk… right?" She still sounds unsure and he thinks that, at the very least, he can take comfort in the fact that he isn’t the only one who doesn’t have a clue on how to deal with this.

"Aye, we probably should."

Easier said than done. For a good, long, awkward moment they keep sitting there in silence, pointedly looking at anything but each other. Vocally, he’s never had a problem before, but right now the words seem hellbent on evading him. Once again, it’s up to Adelle to take charge. She still doesn’t quite manage to look him in the eye when she speaks, but the fact that she’s talking at all still puts her one up on him.

"What you said in that… memory, did you mean it?"

He can’t fathom why she sounds so hesitant. It’s a no-brainer, really. 

"Yes. All of it," he answers, not a shred of doubt in his heart. And, ah yes, now she’s looking at him, in her blue eyes an expression he’s never seen on her before. Now that she's had her answer, he can't help himself but to repeat her own question back at her.

"What about you? Did you mean what you said?" Her answer comes as quickly as his own.

"I did." A pause. Then – "I do."

Then _why_ did you stay behind, he wants to ask but he can tell the issue weighs even heavier on her than it does on him, and the last thing he wants to do is push too far. Turns out he doesn’t have to. When she speaks again, after a tense moment of silence, it is with an answer to his unspoken question.

"Elvis, I’m sorry. For leaving you behind like that when I could’ve chosen to stay. But I _had_ to do it." 

And that’s it. The plain truth, in its entirety. 

"I know," he says in a low voice. "I understand."

"You don’t have to pretend it’s fine, really-"

"Hold it right there, okay? Yes, seeing you stay behind hurt, more than anything, but I don’t blame you for your decision. I haven’t been angry with you, not even for a moment. I swear it." How could he ever be? She did the brave thing. The _right_ thing, even if it ended up hurting both of them in the process.

A shaky breath escapes her and she deflates a little, obviously relieved. 

"And anyway, as long as you don’t ever have to make that choice again, everything will be fine!" What was an, albeit clumsy, attempt to dispel the heavy atmosphere ends up backfiring completely as her face takes on a darker expression again.

"Elvis…" she begins, her voice heavy with doubt, but he interrupts her again by putting one hand on her shoulder and turning to properly face her this time.

"Adelle." His voice is completely devoid of his usual mirth. Elvis is serious about this. "Swear to me, no matter what happens, you won’t do anything like- like you did in that memory ever again. Don’t sacrifice yourself for the rest of us." 

Even though he desperately wants to reassure her, he can’t quite keep his voice from breaking towards the end. The memory is still too fresh on his mind. 

"But what if it’s the only way?"

"We all saw what happened with Gloria." Finding a way for Adelle to keep on living wouldn’t be the first time they outplayed fate. "If push comes to shove, we’ll find another way."

"I want to believe that, I really do, but… There’s an easy way to seal away the Night’s Nexus without anyone having to die for it and you guys are refusing to do it for, well, for me."

"Believe me, you’re more than worth the trouble," he says, and means it. 

"Am I though?"

She still sounds unsure. Well, in that case, he'll just have to tell her again that she is, until she finally accepts it.

"Without a doubt."

Both of them go quiet after that, turning their attention onto the campfire again, instead of each other. This time around though, it’s not an awkward silence. Still, he can tell he has something more to say, so he patiently waits until she’s ready. Though, in true Adelle fashion, it doesn’t take long for her to get on with it.

"Hey, Elvis? If the whole Mag Mell debacle hadn’t happened, would you ever have told me?" He doesn’t have to ask to know what she means, even if their ill-timed love confession hadn’t been dominating the conversation so far.

 _Yes._ At least that’s what he wants to say. But, thinking back on how he acted before future-not-future Elvis forced his hand, he can’t. If he lies about it now, he’d be doing both of them a disservice. Besides, Adelle would see through him in a second.

"I don’t know. Maybe, after the Night’s Nexus was dealt with," he answers truthfully. "Or maybe I would’ve gone back to Wiswald and never brought it up."

"Really?" she says, sounding surprised rather than disappointed. "That doesn’t sound like you at all." 

"C’mon, we both know I can be a bit of a coward sometimes. Why’d you think I didn’t tell you sooner?" That actually gets a chuckle out of her and as happy as he is to finally see this gloomy atmosphere lifted, Elvis, once again, needs to mirror her quesiton. "What about you though, would you have said anything?"

"Never," she admits without missing a beat. Between the two of them, she’s always been better at confronting the uncomfortable. "I wouldn’t even have said it at Mag Mell if you hadn’t gone first."

"Why?"

"Same reason as you, I guess." She shrugs. "I was scared."

"But when I tried to tell you at the forest you said you already knew, which, by the way, totally stole my thunder, so why be scared?" He really doesn’t get it, Adelle is the bravest person he knows. 

"Isn’t it obvious? No matter what, we’ll always be so… different."

_Not this again._

"But we’ve been over that! I don’t mind that you’re a Fairy, you’ll always be Adelle to me, and-"

"You’ll age so much quicker," she blurts out before he can finish.

Oh, so that’s what it is. She did tell him once that she was about five times his age, which would put her roughly at 175 years. And still, she looks younger than him. Elvis, on the other hand, will age, and die, within the next fifty-or-so years. Years that, to someone with that long of a lifespan, might pass in the blink of an eye. Even to him, it’s obvious why that’s a scary thought. So, he does what he does best – responding to something utterly serious with a joke.

"So you only want me for my body while I’m still young and supple but once I become old and wrinkly you’re done?" That one earns him a punch in the arm.

 _"Elvis!"_ She half-shouts, trying to sound scandalized but is barely able to contain a laugh. 

"Sorry," he chuckles. "Couldn’t help that one."

"You’re impossible." Despite the harsh words, she’s smiling. "That’s not it though. I’m just scared that by the time I get used to having you around… you’ll be gone."

Well, what does one even say to that? Elvis doesn’t have a clue about the mortifying fear of outliving all your loved ones by ages, so he resorts to saying what he, more or less, always says. 

"I wouldn’t worry too much about that one."

"Yeah, but you don’t worry about anything," she shoots back in an almost relaxed tone before her eyes suddenly go wide. "Wait, is that your way of saying you never planned to stick around?!"

"Crikey, Adelle! _No!"_ Granted, his words just now were a bit clumsy, but he still doesn’t understand how she jumped to that conclusion, of all things. "This isn’t just some fling for me. I don’t know how it is with Fairies, but us humans don’t throw around the old 'I love you' if we don’t mean it. At least not if you’re a decent person."

"Oh, so you’re a decent person now?" 

They share another laugh and he’s beyond happy that they’re able to joke around like that again. He’s missed it, these past few days.

"Seriously, don’t worry about technicalities too much." He’s this close to telling her not to 'sweat the details' but after the memory the book showed them even thinking of those words leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. "I know that’s easy for me to say, but think about it like this for a second – if you worry too much about the future you’ll miss what’s in the present." He says those words fully knowing that, whatever lies ahead, it won’t be easy.

But Elvis doesn’t want easy. He wants Adelle.

"Look, Adelle, I can’t promise you it’ll be all sunshine and rainbows. Hell, I can’t even promise you the world will still be here in a few days. But I _can_ promise to try."

With that, he puts one of his hands on hers, resting on the ground between them, waiting for her to react. To say or do _something_ , even if that something is to pull away from him. Elvis made his position clear, has made his choice. Now, she needs to make hers. 

"You’re right." Her response, though not particularly wordy, has him feeling more relieved than he cares to admit.

"I’m _always_ right." 

"Okay, now you’re pushing it." That gets another laugh out of him and, consequently, her. 

"So, what now?" 

"Now’s the part where I promise to try too." 

"That’s it?" he asks, his voice laden with humor. "No grand plans? I must really be rubbing off on you."

"Yes." It’s only a single word, but it means so much more than that. "Yes, you are."

And with that, all of his lingering doubts are wiped away and he loses himself in the moment. When he looks into her eyes, reflecting the flames of the campfire, he sees hope, pure and unbridled. Adelle is looking at him too, and he wonders if she sees something similar. 

Neither of them are overeager teenagers anymore, far from it, so when they move towards each other there’s no rush. They’re not hurried in the slightest when they put their arms around each other, shifting closer and closer in the process, until not an inch of space remains between them and they’re resting safely in each other's arms. 

Being up close and personal with each other isn’t exactly new for them. After all, they’ve been traveling together for a good while now, fighting back to back, patching up each other’s wounds, sleeping next to each other in a cramped tent. 

But this, this is different. 

There’s an intent behind their movements that’s never been there before. Love. When he bends down to rest his head in the crook of her neck and releases the breath he was holding it feels like, for a moment, the weight of the burden they’re carrying is lifted from his shoulders. Both of them allow themselves to stay like that for a while and, for that moment, they aren’t the crystals chosen warriors, aren’t the unlikely couple of a fairy and a human, they’re simply Adelle and Elvis. 

Before he pulls away what feels like aeons later, Elvis presses a feather-light kiss, their first one, onto her shoulder. It’s more of a gesture than anything else, especially considering there’s at least one layer of fabric between her skin and his lips, but when she puts her hand on the spot he kissed and smiles he still feels his heart swell in his chest. A moment later, she’s already pushing herself off the ground.

"Alright, now get up and help me find the others. It’d be rude to get on with dinner without them and I, for one, am starving."

_Straight back to business, eh?_ Not that he expected anything else. Adelle is nothing if not practical, one of the many, many, things he loves about her. 

Once she’s standing she holds out a hand to help him up. He takes it.


End file.
